James Herbert was home where his wife lived, that day.  He was furious when he saw the workmen and Melanctha.  He drove the men away with curses so that they were all very nearly fighting, and he would not let a doctor come in to attend Melanctha.  “Why don’t you see to that girl better, you, you’re her mother.”

James Herbert did not fight things out now any more with his daughter.  He feared her tongue, and her school learning, and the way she had of saying things that were very nasty to a brutal black man who knew nothing.  And Melanctha just then hated him very badly in her suffering.

And so this was the way Melanctha lived the four years of her beginning as a woman.  And many things happened to Melanctha, but she knew very well that none of them had led her on to the right way, that certain way that was to lead her to world wisdom.

Melanctha Herbert was sixteen when she first met Jane Harden.  Jane was a negress, but she was so white that hardly any one could guess it.  Jane had had a good deal of education.  She had been two years at a colored college.  She had had to leave because of her bad conduct.  She taught Melanctha many things.  She taught her how to go the ways that lead to wisdom.

Jane Harden was at this time twenty-three years old and she had had much experience.  She was very much attracted by Melanctha, and Melanctha was very proud that this Jane would let her know her.

Jane Harden was not afraid to understand.  Melanctha who had strong the sense for real experience, knew that here was a woman who had learned to understand.

Jane Harden had many bad habits.  She drank a great deal, and she wandered widely.  She was safe though now, when she wanted to be safe, in this wandering.

Melanctha Herbert soon always wandered with her.  Melanctha tried the drinking and some of the other habits, but she did not find that she cared very much to do them.  But every day she grew stronger in her desire to really understand.

It was now no longer, even in the daylight, the rougher men that these two learned to know in their wanderings, and for Melanctha the better classes were now a little higher.  It was no longer express agents and clerks that she learned to know, but men in business, commercial travelers, and even men above these, and Jane and she would talk and walk and laugh and escape from them all very often.  It was still the same, the knowing of them and the always just escaping, only now for Melanctha somehow it was different, for though it was always the same thing that happened it had a different flavor, for now Melanctha was with a woman who had wisdom, and dimly she began to see what it was that she should understand.

It was not from the men that Melanctha learned her wisdom.  It was always Jane Harden herself who was making Melanctha begin to understand.